Cattle Identification

Livestock identification and the management of livestock movements are critical to the control of animal diseases and access to trade in animals and animal products.

Traceability is the basis of any future system for food safety and epidemiological surveillance for animal diseases. For this reason, there is growing demand for identification of livestock and livestock products from the point of origin to the point of consumption. While the main drivers for this are disease control, trade and food safety, there are other reasons why livestock owners will benefit from identifying their livestock. These include prevention of theft, animal performance recording, breeding, genetic improvement, management, livestock statistics and proof of ownership for prevention of theft, collateral, insurance and in some cases, financial assistance.

Rules and standards and specific guidelines for the purpose of identifying animals establishes ICAR, International Committee for Animal Recording (www.icar.org).

Based on these standards and rules we proposed a central system for cattle identification in Zambia (CEZ):